Poems for Wyatt b 4.3.15 d 4.4.15

14 Oct Poems for Wyatt b 4.3.15 d 4.4.15

Let us peer through this tenuous opening The way bloody, juicy, soft I will cover for you when it is time, I will tell you to run, son But until then, let us peek around the corner Let us play in the water Let us take our time.

My body has always been anxious. Each stretch of muscle trained to run, Instinctively it follows the wrong instincts Duck when I should hunt Hunt when I should tend Tend when I should shun Shun when I should mend.

I want better for you. Let us take our time.

You have learned to punch and kick. And you have learned to smile. Learn to stay. To hang on. I’m sorry you have to learn so early what I have learned so late. Hiccup your way through strengthening lungs, Let your heart accelerate To the cadences of words said aloud Echoing through watery speakers I am talking to you, loving you, wanting you to hear my message, Wanting you to play with me To enjoy it, take it easy, our time so close together on this earth is short By any measure, Each day a gift, a lovely path Let’s meander Through the thinning muscle that separates their world from ours Soon enough it will be too thin, Soon enough it will break, So let us take our time With it still wrapped thick and blanketing Your heart to mine.

04/02/15

Our lives

These are our lives Full of insects that crawl up leaves Into the cups of Easter Lillies Full of slow-turning blooms Sometimes unfolding in white rooms Day by day, we water them Paint them With whatever we have at our disposal Which is sometimes an army of hyacinth Sometimes only our own untamed blood

Stay here in our lives in the moment Which will never be the same, can never be undone So I flick on a tune that reminds us to slow down Harken in our sunny room, to the Smell of hyacinth, make our promises to remark on The sparkling view from where we are, The metal-corded bridge piecing worlds together Across abundant waters The richness of chocolate and softness of lathered soap The small graces we are here allotted God’s soft kisses atop the heads of lives carried Through quiet rooms, to help us bear the secrets That the water, the flowers, the blood Stitch together, seemingly without us.

We make our ernest and heartfelt requests Throw them up like pollen, and sometimes like paint We conjure our own secrets, Which catch on the legs of moving things And make their way towards the delicate folds of carpel To leave our mark, our own stain of color On lives stitched together, seemingly without us.

04/05/15

Ashes Mirror of genetics Or the Universe’s own immaculate tessellation The way you fit into my chest The yin yang of your heart feeding mine, you nuzzled against my breast Just the right size, no space spared, Your father’s arms around us Unit of love, three chests shared As petals protect the seed, Breathing, beating, protecting as One Being, Single surge of life bursting forth As nature had designed, the three of us, you at the core Of this family, Our family. Having known this miraculous Oneness, Tell me what is left in our chests now that you are gone Tell me what of the three of us Has not turned to ashes?

My friends and family say We are thinking of you, Tell us what you want us to do Tell us, we are grieving for you, But I have no words, only pictures Of his last moments in our arms No requests, except make it all untrue.

04/06/07

Emily, the social worker, called

But I don’t want to talk I want to punch and kick But I can barely walk I want to beat my chest and tear my clothes to shreds But my breasts have become Knotted lumps, a stone cage, Bracing my heart from my fists’ rage My hands grip-less, I sob from a heap in my bed instead. What is the Universe protecting by weakening me so? Itself or me? Answer me that, Emily. I want to know Why the Universe cut from my belly what I loved most Why it left me too weak to intervene as it turned him to a ghost Too weak to stand, why I had to sit Burying him in my tears, witnessing all of it Offering him only the hollowed torso, where he should have been, safe and warm, I don’t want to talk to you, there’s nothing to sort– I want him back. I want answers And you can’t give me that.

04/07/15

My husband looks at me His face a ship at sea He says “I need you.” Our eyes are anchor-less, Or maybe it’s just me. I’m not ready to go back to the shore, Where our loved ones are waiting to grab us and hold us to the land. I don’t want to remember what’s there— What they know and want me to remember. I want no more of the seasons.

04/07/15 Today I told my husband that I wanted to eat our son’s ashes. He belongs inside of me until spring, when he can survive without me. I’ve read of pregnant women eating charcoal and dirt; Doctors shake their heads and say what she’s really craving is iron.

What would they say if I gulped down his ashes? What would they say my blood was craving then? Could they name the profound deficiencies everywhere inside me That only what’s left of him could fill?

04/12/15 It was a sad day when our friends finally came And I had to admit to them that you were gone; They said they didn’t need reasons, But we all did, we all wanted to know About your soft hair, the heavenly smell of you, The lungs that pushed so hard for so long Then tired unexpectedly in the night, Your fighting heart, enlarged from all the struggle. We did not want this suffering for you. We did not want to admit that we had taken the miracle of your life for granted. So many miracles happen these days, we thought; The carseat parked by the door.

Too much

I don’t know what color your eyes were They were shut when they handed you to me Your pinkish brow still warm and balmy After so much work, You looked like you were drifting into sleep, Your heart rate gently falling So tired—it was all too much Too much to ask of someone so little and so new Unfair of me to ask of you To keep on trying When I had not given you enough time to prepare Unfair Of me to ask of you, when you had not enough time to grow, You looked like you were drifting into sleep, Too much of me to ask of you Not to go. It doesn’t say on your birth certificate or your death certificate What color your eyes were: Just two time stamps, nineteen hours and twenty-six minutes apart Your gorgeous name framed on two royal blue papers; The lost color of your eyes Drawing black curtains over my heart.

Seasons

You were not due til long after the cherry blossoms came Long after Spring bulbs had bloomed And summer too End of June, I would come to you And introduce you to the seasons. Always, my son, we wait for the seasons.

I asked your father what happens if we plant a bulb to soon? A fall bulb, planted in May, for example, He said you can’t plant what is already in bloom, Wait, wait, for the seasons.

Perhaps you are too much like me, Impatient. Eager. Perhaps it was not you but me, Being impatient, eager. Perhaps I never had faith in the seasons.

red reset

recycled bloodlet my baby carved out of me The only language my womb Knows how to use shakes loose the blood of our clotted roots The veins red and blue sheds, forgets what remains of all promises of our making all that we built together red, the pool of our unity the too-early ejection of my most prized creation the most precious part of me red, the heart that reached its tendrils all around him Promises to him, Broken, cleaved red, the bed, the vile reset That took his heart from me

Mother of Lilies

I have become a demanding mother: “Tell me you love me!” “Prove to me that you are still here with me!” The mother I never wanted to be. Demanding loyalty, proof, when in truth, I hope that you are set free The lilies unfold and I think I am holding you Crouching down in the field of them My chest aching just to reach you The petals fall when I barely touch them and I feel that I have broken everything that I have ever loved The red beetles munch on your leaves and I kill them one by one but cannot ever seem to protect you The long list of my failures transmitting through their elusive antennae I am the mother of lilies now To care for them and watch them grow my new concern I am a critical mother Where is the random kick of your legs when you hear my voice? Or the tiny toes that curl and uncurl as you’re dreaming? Or that soft spot right under your chin that I long to nuzzle? What of these things does a mother of lilies know But still I demand them of you As I search your spirit in the fields I am constantly asking you questions, wanting you to comfort me through their colors The roles reversed as I swore they would not, I am the child looking for the hand to hold Should your absence be any excuse? Should I hover, over and over, trying to keep you close, pulled to me, rather than roaming, growing, in worlds I cannot see? No. Son, please forgive me. I am not the mother I meant to be.

Untitled

I can’t stand the steel-coated conference tables The right angles that remember nothing I can’t breathe, ghosts kick inside me They summon my animal self Ears perched up, I hear everything everything Sitting in this chair, in this board room The fans whirring against suit collars The pens clicking in and out, hum of voices back and forth While my mind pads through like a wolf in the forest Sniffing out the thing that’s out of place The bent blade of grass misaligned with my memory What is amiss in this slick room with straight edges Tucked away from the natural world where my body roams inside me I can’t feel the lilies’ heavy heads against my knees, We are so far away There is no trace, no memory Of warm spots made inside folded arms Or the heavenly scents that accompany small curves Or the body that leans into the breeze Wondering if it will ever carry a baby’s cry.